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Complaints to FDA Led to Cheerios Gluten-free Lawsuit

Jefferson Adams

Jefferson Adams is a freelance writer living in San Francisco. His poems, essays and photographs have appeared in Antioch Review, Blue Mesa Review, CALIBAN, Hayden's Ferry Review, Huffington Post, the Mississippi Review, and Slate among others.

He is a member of both the National Writers Union, the International Federation of Journalists, and covers San Francisco Health News for Examiner.com.

The recent suit was brought by a Kentucky woman, who alleges that she purchased two boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios labeled as gluten-free, but which actually contained gluten levels more than two times higher than allowed under FDA standards.

The consumer complaints led to FDA testing on gluten-free Cheerios. The FDA tested 36 samples of gluten-free Cheerios taken from different manufacturing facilities and lots. The tests found that some "Gluten Free" Cheerios samples contained as much as 43 ppm gluten. Current FDA rules forbid the use of the statement "gluten-free" on any food product with gluten levels above 20 parts per million.

I had the same question as Bob Zander: are the boxes of "GF Cheerios" now on the shelves GF? Those distributed last fall by General Mills were recalled...so does that mean that the product on grocery shelves today ARE safe to eat?

I received a recall notice before I could even eat them from Sam's Club. I remember that General Mills had quite a bit of information on their web site at the time. I agree, it should be noted that this has been rectified and it was an error that they quickly corrected.

I agree more follow up should be done regarding the recall and subsequent activities undertaken by General Mills. Working in the regulated industry, I know that whenever a recall is initiated, substantial "root cause" analysis is done to apply corrective actions to assure this doesn't happen again.

Stating that the oats were contaminated with real wheat is misleading because their process to render a gluten free product is by removing the gluten, NOT by preventing contamination. The fact of the matter is that their process of removing gluten is either not effective or that they did not do consistent testing to ensure the gluten free status. I personally will not consume their product until the celiac community has tried and tested it.

And now they wish to patent GF oats, great! NOT! I can´t eat oats anyway, but I will never trust this General Mills. They are too big for their britches; it is not about safety, it is all about their bottom dollar.